Malaysian Exquisite Batik Used in Drug-Smuggling Ploy

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Malaysian Exquisite Batik Used in Drug-Smuggling Ploy

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No one would even dare to link the beautiful batik silk with drugs, to some fierce batik artisans, that is comparable to lighting fire under Karl Lagerfeld's empire. 

The Malaysian batik has always been known as the exquisitely wearable "art". The vividly handpainted silks received international fame for their delightful traditional individual designs.

And now, unfortunately for these traditional handicraft, it's gathering fame in the wrong pool of waters: drug smuggling activities.

The criminal organization was revealed to being run by syndicate members that claimed to be authorized importers of batik and local handicrafts when buying them in bulks. The members by majority came from African countries.

"The Star" earlier last week reported that, the members of the syndicate would enticed local Malaysian woman to smuggle the drugs under the pretex of "exporting" authentic Malaysian products.

And that the items were to be sold throughout Europe.

With the promise of permanent high salary employment and the lure of quick money, some of the women were paid up to RM30,000 for certain trips (depending on the weight of the drugs they were carrying).

Prior to the batik-ploy, the drug syndicate was previously ran by tricking gullible and unsuspecting women to falling in love with their "pretend" suitors who supposedly were successful businessmen.

The syndicate members later forced these unsuspicious women to become their drug mules usually by convincing them to collect documents or items for them from various European countries.

In an independent source, there are currently 170 Malaysian women, aged 21 to 30 who are serving jail time all over the world for trafficking drugs.

However when their syndicate of sending women for job interviews and collecting items overseas had gone awry, they have since come up with the recent scheme of using more unsuspecting local women and some fancy batik to get pass the sniffers and badges.

The latest ploy came to light in May earlier this year as revealed by Kuala Lumpur City Narcotics Chief Assistant Commissioner, Kang Chez Chiang, which the police had succesfully rescued a 20 years old Malaysian women just hours before she boarded for Spain.

And at least for this particular incident, the police also managed to nab and arrest 3 Africans, aged 24 and 31, who duped the women. They are currently being detained for further investigation as well as awaiting to face prosecution in the Malaysian court.

Despite the efforts being made to whip the syndicate, in year 2007 alone, 80 unsuspecting women have been arrested with 53 of them charged for drug offences all over with the concertration in Japan, Spain, Venezuela, India and Portugal.

As this cover is blown, the "business" of drug smuggling is too deep and too widely connected to fully shut the lid tight. It's only a matter of time till they bring out the next scam from their bottomless bag of tricks...